Bheem

by Jyotin Goel

  Bheem shook his head. ‘I am mistaken. It could only have been Saragha, momentarily restored to sanity.’

  They looked at him, flummoxed, as he turned away. His thoughts in turmoil, Bheem tried to make sense of the vision he had been afforded and the miracle in the shaft.

  He was here . . . Vayuputra!

  His mind churned. Hidimbi’s grief, the urn, Yajika’s ashes—a flash of irrational jealousy shot through Bheem.

  So her tapasya, her penance, was not for me. It was for this woman, Yajika, but who was she?

  And then the vision welled up again: the golden vaanar hovering over the body of the woman and the four infants.

  Vayuputra; he was there when the four sisters were born. And he is here again . . . the Four Saviours . . .

  A coincidence? Bheem thought not. ‘Tell me, healer, if an illness cannot harm me, would my brother have the same shield?’

  ‘Y—your brother?’ stuttered Nishi, startled. ‘To a—a certain extent, yes. Immunity is gene-determined, heritable. There’s a good chance that brothers would carry similar genes. Definitely in identical twins, of course.’

  ‘Twins . . .’ The warrior’s eyes gleamed. ‘And four sisters, all identical?’

  ‘Identical quadruplets? That would be a billion-to-one chance. Known to happen among certain animal species, though.’

  ‘These sisters . . .’ Aviva gestured to the temple looming above them. ‘Are they something to do with what you learnt in there?’

  Bheem eyed his anxious companions. How much could he share with them? The appearance of the Vayuputra had changed everything. There were forces in play here that he himself did not understand. One thing was certain, however: something within him had shifted. Suddenly, his quest for vengeance seemed almost laughable, the overblown posturing of an actor in a bad play. He felt an urgency, a desperation, to find the remaining saviours, and it was not because they could lead him to the enemy. Nor was it an altruistic impulse to help save the maanavs. He knew himself too well for that. This was something primitive, a feeling that rose from his deepest instincts. He had to find the saviours. It was as simple as that. He did not know why.

  Bheem turned to Aviva. ‘You asked a question. The answer is yes, I saw four infants—sisters. Born here, on this very ground, more than a hundred generations ago. There are things I cannot speak of. . .’ He paused, eyes glazing over as if he were looking at something vast—a mountain, an ocean—something that was impossible to see in its entirety. He collected himself, and continued, ‘The saviours, the immune ones that share the blood shield, I believe they share parentage. They inherit their blood from the four sisters.’

  It took Aviva a moment to assimilate what the warrior had said. ‘You mean they’re—?’

  ‘He could be right!’ Nishi was flushed, excited. ‘It makes sense! A mutated gene, traced back over generations to a single source!’

  ‘But—but wouldn’t that mean that others in the victims’ families . . .’ Vineet gripped the scientist’s arm. ‘Couldn’t they also be immune?’

  ‘That was the first thing we tried to do.’ Nishi’s excitement seemed to waver. ‘Tried to find out if Valsamma had any living relatives. She was an orphan, no parents, no siblings. The orphanage records had been lost in a fire years ago.’

  ‘But the other one—’ Aviva said.

  ‘Other?’ Nishi was stunned. ‘You found another—?’

  ‘Aneeta Nair. She was killed . . . in Kabul, Afghanistan.’

  ‘But her family!’ Nishi looked hopeful. ‘She could have had siblings, parents.’

  ‘She was from Bengaluru. My local office there could track them down!’ said Vineet eagerly. ‘I’d have to reach the Old Man somehow. But then he’d have to believe me.’ He turned to Bheem. ‘I think you’d be very persuasive.’

  ~

  The Himalayas

  26–27 October 2017

  For a night and a day, Kritavarma lay in the shadow. Death hovered, its hand stayed by an unceasing chant:

  Om tryambakam yajamahe

  Sugandham pushti-vardhanan

  Ashvatthama kept vigil, holding Kritavarma’s comatose form in his arms, invoking the Mrityunjaya Mantra, the hymn of victory over death. Boiling, sulphurous water bubbled from the spring above, cascading down the rock face and on to them. Ashvatthama did not flinch. It wasn’t for Kritavarma that Ashvatthama fought, it was against defeat. He would not lose his last clansman to the hated enemy.

  But was it over already? Had Bheem won? His ferocious attack had snapped Kritavarma’s neck, rupturing vital synapses linking brain and body. The tree song sutras rooted in Kritavarma’s unconscious mind now raged out of control, ravaging his body, repeatedly—horrifyingly—transforming it. Sudden flame consumed Kritavarma’s limbs; his features hardened into stone that blistered and melted as if assailed by acid and ran into the sulphurous water that flowed around it, hissing into steam. Every metamorphosis could have been final, irreversible, but each time Ashvatthama intervened, using the sutras to transfer some of his own life force to his ally, arresting the transformations before they were complete, reversing them.

  He shuddered with effort, as Kritavarma’s limbs regained their original form, the boiling water, the angry steam moulding themselves back into a tortured face. Ashvatthama was aware that his opponent in this game was Yama himself and the stakes were the highest possible—his own life. With every transformation, Kritavarma’s existence ebbed; with each reversal, Ashvatthama’s life dwindled. But he chose to remain in the game. He had heard Bheem’s challenge, seethed at the thought of the arrogant gauntlet the warrior had flung down. Deliberately, Ashvatthama had let it lie. He would not abandon his follower; the two Kuru soldiers would see out the mission together, hunt down and destroy the so-called saviours until none remained. And then he would turn implacably to the final showdown with Bheem.

  2

  New Delhi

  27 October 2017

  ‘Where the fuck is that fucker?!’

  Colourful to begin with, the Old Man’s language had turned almost exclusively purple. He wasn’t that old, of course, but the pressures of running a traditional broadsheet in the digital age were causing Bhaskar Bannerjee to feel the leaden weight of every minute of his fifty-nine years. What was an editor-in-chief to do when his best reporter goes missing, resurfaces suddenly with a cryptic remark on the hottest story around and then vanishes again? Gloomily, Bannerjee stepped out of the shower in his eighteenth-floor apartment in the Clarion Building at Connaught Place, where he lived alone (his wife having mortifyingly left him for a TV anchor six years before). The floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the apartment delivered a spectacular view but it did little to lift Bannerjee’s mood. Two numbers weighed on his mind: 2,00,000 (down towards which horrendous circulation figure his newspaper was spiralling) and sixty (his age on his fast-approaching birthday, the official retirement age at the Clarion). The numbers were inextricably connected—breach that circulation figure and the proprietors would unquestionably trigger the retirement option. Bannerjee looked at his saggy, naked body reflected in the glass windows. He could almost see the fig leaf hung on every involuntarily retired sixty-year-old: the humiliating cover-up of ‘consultant’. It was a fate worse than . . . Bannerjee’s imagination brooded colourfully. He desperately needed that breakthrough story.

  ‘Where the fuck is Sinha?’ he muttered, covering his head and vigorously towelling his thick, greying hair.

  A whisper of sound. Bannerjee barely heard it, continuing to try and massage away an incipient migraine. A metallic scrape. Bannerjee stopped drying himself.

  Something being moved across the floor . . . A chair?

  He whipped the towel off his head. The sight before him caused two things to drop simultaneously: the towel from Bannerjee’s limp fingers, and his jaw.

  Sinha!

  And he wasn’t alone. Bannerjee’s eyes registered multiple presences. Woman, seated, bandaged ankle. Another woman, foreign-looking, dar
k hair. But, like an unpaid cell phone connection, services between Bannerjee’s eyes and mind were temporarily suspended.

  ‘Ba—ba—ba—’ he babbled.

  Vineet grinned. The journey through Sesha Nag had been worth it just for the Old Man’s reaction. ‘Got anything to eat, Chief?’

  ‘Sinha!’ Bannerjee’s mind abruptly resumed functioning. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘Before we go into that, Chief, shouldn’t you put something on?’

  On?

  Sinha and the foreign woman wore broad grins. The seated woman was looking away, embarrassed. And then Bannerjee noticed the towel on the floor. He hadn’t moved as fast since dodging the saucepan flung at him by his ex-wife six years earlier. His hands were a blur as he snatched up and wound the towel around his pendulous midriff, the pale yellow of the cloth very fetching against the furious pink of the blush that suffused every Bannerjee inch.

  ‘Sinha,’ he croaked, desperately clutching the towel, ‘where the fuck—’ Then, remembering that there were women present, he continued, ‘—where did you spring from? How did you get in?’

  ‘I think you need to take that up with him.’

  With whom?

  The moron was pointing at something behind him. Was there yet another gatecrasher? What was this, a party? Bannerjee swung around, glowering. And his jaw dropped again.

  A giant. A monster.

  He filled the room. Bannerjee looked at the massive shoulders, the fierce, tattooed face, and shuddered. How could he have been there, behind him, and yet . . . Bannerjee had been completely oblivious to his presence. Through the fog that seemed to have enveloped his mind, he distantly heard Vineet.

  ‘I have a story for you, Chief. I think you should sit down.’ He was trying to keep laughter out of his voice. ‘And you should probably pick up that towel again.’

  ~

  The Himalayas

  ‘I have failed you, my general.’

  Kritavarma’s voice had the ring of hard truth. He had recovered consciousness, but lay immobile in the snow next to the sulphur spring, a quadriplegic, paralysed below his broken neck.

  ‘Not so, my friend.’ Ashvatthama ran gentle fingers through his fallen comrade’s hair, brushing out the sulphur crystals braided through the matted locks like strings of yellow diamonds. ‘It is your human form that falters. But you have no need of it.’

  Kritavarma looked at his leader, uncomprehending. Then, all at once, his face cleared and he laughed joyously. ‘Of course! I have never needed it! You are right, as always, Ashvatthama. Attachment to this form is just vanity.’

  The Brahmin nodded, glad that the Kshatriya had understood him. Ashvatthama could have done what he intended without Kritavarma’s acquiescence, but it was far better that his follower relinquish his body voluntarily. His loyalty to his master then would be unquestioned.

  Kritavarma’s laughter eased. For a moment, he looked at Ashvatthama solemnly, and then smiled. ‘Take me, my leader. My guru dakshina to you is long overdue.’

  Ashvatthama laid a gentle hand on his friend’s chest, the warrior heart within still throbbing defiance. ‘Gladly do I accept your dakshina, Krita. We will meet again in the hereafter, in the hall of heroes.’ Softly, he chanted the sutras.

  Black fire. A riptide of blinding pain. Ashvatthama groaned with pleasure, screamed in agony. Kritavarma did not, his Kshatriya code intact even as life was torn from his broken body. His limbs dissolved into living wax in the dark flame, a molten whirlpool that whipped around the two comrades. Kritavarma’s heart stopped beating, his face liquefied. The eyes were the last to go, open, gazing steadily at Ashvatthama until the end. The whirlpool roared, clutching at Ashvatthama. With no warning at all, it imploded, the magma showering on to the screaming warrior at its centre. The hissing fluid ate through Ashvatthama’s skin; he could feel it within, gnawing at his bones, feasting on his organs. His lungs burst, howling protest against this horrific violation. And then, abruptly, it was over. Ashvatthama raised his head. His skin tingled, power surged, exploding through muscle and fibre. They had won; his comrade remained alive, in his body. Ashvatthama threw his head back and roared and the mountains joined in, bellowing his challenge to the enemy.

  ~

  New Delhi

  28 October 2017

  12.03 a.m.

  ‘Aradhana Nair!’ The Clarion’s Bengaluru operations manager’s voice sounded pleased. He had found the girl faster than anyone had expected. ‘She’s a cousin, the only relative Aneeta Nair had. Got the name from the fianc?.’

  ‘Great!’ Vineet looked at the others and raised his thumb. ‘Get to her right now,’ he said into Bannerjee’s phone, the Old Man still too stunned by Bheem’s presence to think coherently. ‘Get her somewhere safe! We’ll come at once.’

  ‘B—but,’ the manager stuttered, ‘she’s not here . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She lives there . . . in Delhi. I have an address.’

  New Delhi

  12.07 a.m.

  After midnight, the gardens around the medieval tombs were the best place to shoot up. There were hardly any passers-by; the few that remained were probably like her: society’s castoffs, seekers of powdered solace. For a week now, her need to blot out reality had been unrelenting, much more demanding than usual—she was mourning her cousin’s death. Aneeta’s horrific killing had shocked her but the sense of bereavement she continued to feel was unexpected. After all, they had broken with each other two years earlier.

  Bitch! she thought, trying to stoke the anger that had lingered from Aneeta’s last visit, when she had sanctimoniously lectured her about coke.

  She couldn’t do it, couldn’t pretend that she felt anything but aching loss. It had been the two of them against the world, no parents, no siblings or family, just each other. She had to ease the pain, but coke was out of reach now. Her life had come apart; crack was all she could afford—when she got lucky. She had to find a pusher who peddled junk, the cheaper stuff that provided a few hours of rough relief in the dark. Needy, desperate, she scoured the shadowed gardens, looking for someone who was looking for someone like her.

  Good Deal Hostel

  Paharganj, New Delhi

  12.43 a.m.

  Its glowing website was a scam. Good Deal Hostel was a dive, a crumbling three-storey building in a dirty alley—everyday territory for a Delhi-based reporter. Vineet smiled at the grubby manager behind the greasy counter.

  ‘Know her?’

  The printout he had placed on the countertop was already distorted by oily patterns, but Aradhana Nair’s face was clear enough.

  ‘No.’

  Vineet looked sympathetic. ‘Yep, those grease spots make it difficult.’ He laid a crisp, new five-hundred-rupee note on the printout. ‘Better?’

  The eyes flickered. ‘She’s not in.’

  ‘But if you had to find her in a hurry . . . ?’ Vineet laid down another note.

  ‘She goes out, she comes back. Where she goes, what she does . . .’ The man shrugged carelessly, but his eyes flicked to the notes again.

  He was holding out for more; this was taking too long. Vineet stepped back. The manager looked up, his brows knitting with sudden worry. Had he overplayed his hand?

  12.51 a.m.

  The ability of animals to predict imminent natural events baffles humans. The vagrants and drifters that remained in the park at this late hour were startled by the rising twitters and uneasy grunts of the hidden fauna populating the shrubbery, sounds that only ceased six minutes later when a lightning bolt speared down unexpectedly from a clear October night sky. It struck an obscure corner of the fifty-four-acre sprawl and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, so no one spotted the huge form that became visible as the smoky dust of the lightning strike dissipated. Ashvatthama looked at the starlit sky and oriented himself. There was no error. This was where his prey was every night—in the thinly patrolled, shadowy park around the tomb.

  Good Deal
Hostel

  12.57 a.m.

  The manager was used to threats from underworld goons—a thick skin was a precondition in his line of work. He prided himself on his toughness, on his fighting skills that were as dirty as the encrustations under his nails. He didn’t even consider using them. The monster had appeared from nowhere, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hoisted him. Shocked, dangling three feet above the grimy floor, the manager looked at the terrifying, tattooed face, stared into those dark eyes contemplating him as if he were a flea-ridden mongrel, and, for the first time in thirty-two years, wet himself.

  ‘The gardens,’ the giant rumbled, with chilling certainty. ‘The old tombs.’

  How—how did he know?

  The manager didn’t bother to answer his own question, just croaked, ‘Yes!’ and nodded frenziedly. Anything to get the brute to let go.

  Surprisingly, the giant didn’t fling him away as the manager had fully expected; he simply dropped him. The manager’s legs, like his bladder, were out of his control, and he crumpled to the ground. A few minutes later, he managed to grip the counter and haul himself up. The monster and the other man were gone. Unfortunately, so were the two crisp five-hundred-rupee notes.

  1.17 a.m.

  It was taking longer than usual; the park was getting chilly now. She looked around uneasily. The security guards made their rounds at 2 a.m., taking their cut from the pimps and pushers, shaking down the businesses of the dark. The approaching hour hung over her; finding a mark would get very difficult beyond the deadline.

  Footsteps! she thought, relieved. Not the guards . . . Someone on the other side of the tall hedge.